Defragmenting a hard disk takes several hours, but the results are beneficial for a computer's health. In certain cases, it would be pointless to defragment everything on the hard drive, for only a handful of files. This is where WinContig comes in. Rather than defragmenting all data on your disk, the application is capable of defragmenting specific files, which you can choose yourself. It can also analyze your disk for errors and remove temporary data.

WinContig is distributed as a freeware application, for personal and commercial use. Its core components can be extracted directly from a Zip archive, so you don't have to go through an installation process. Also, the application does not create any registry entries and it doesn't rely on any DLL files, so you can run it from a portable memory device if you want to.

Once the application is up and running, you may start loading the files you wish to defragment, through a standard Open dialog or by dragging and dropping them over the user interface. Loaded files can be analyzed almost instantly, just by clicking an option on a toolbar. After analyzing your files, the application will color code their names and it will display icons next to their entries, to indicate which ones are fragmented or not. Fragmented files are also displayed in a separate list, on the same interface, in which you can choose which ones to defragment.

Before defragmenting your files, WinContig will analyze the hard drive for errors and it will also remove temporary files. Although it is not recommended, you can skip these steps if you want to and proceed directly to the defragmentation process. When the process is complete, the application will tell you how many files are processed, defragmented, skipped and so on. Also, if errors are encountered while defragmenting, they will be displayed on the main interface, on their own tab.

The application comes with other useful features as well. It can tell you the number of fragments and clusters for each file and you can also view the actual fragments. To avoid defragmenting the wrong files, you can set up filters, to exclude or include files with specific extensions or from selected folders. Another useful feature is the possibility of saving and loading defragmentation profiles. Thus, you can perform the same operations, without loading and filtering files each time.

Pros: You can defragment specific files, instead of the entire hard drive. The application can show you the fragments of each file.

Cons: There are no obvious drawbacks to mention.

With WinContig, you can benefit from the effects of a defragmentation process, without having to go through a lengthy process.